N.K. denounces Park’s proposals

Published : 2014-04-01 21:01
Updated : 2014-04-01 21:01

North Korea on Tuesday continued slanderous verbal attacks on South Korean leader Park Geun-hye and blasted her recent offers of bolstering humanitarian aid and bilateral exchanges with the communist regime, calling the proposal “rubbish” and “an unpardonable insult.”

The North’s main Rodong Shimun newspaper said in its article that Park’s unification policies were designed to hurt the North’s “noble ideology and institutions” and to “integrate” its people into the South Korean system.

The article, containing a series of scathing verbal attacks, came a month after the two Koreas agreed to stop verbally attacking each other during their first high-level talks in seven years. It was also seen as preparatory work by the North Korean leadership before it makes an official statement on Park’s proposal announced in the eastern German city of Dresden last week.

Military personnel board a ship at Incheon International Passenger Port on Tuesday. (Yooun Byung-chan/The Korea Herald)

The South Korean president’s proposals are aimed at laying the groundwork for reunification. During her European tour on Friday, Park called for establishing joint offices for cooperation, expanding aid to new mothers and children, and building infrastructure in the North in exchange for rights to develop underground resources.

Calling her a “freakish old maid” and “a frog in the well,” the North’s official mouthpiece said that Park has “made fun of the North Korean people” in regard to her plan to help its homeless children and people in extreme poverty.

Park said last week she felt her heart breaking when watching North Korean homeless children in foreign media broadcasts.

“Children who lost their parents in the midst of economic distress were left neglected out in the cold, struggling from hunger,” she said in her 20-minute speech delivered at the Dresden University of Technology. She vowed to work with the United Nations to launch a humanitarian program to provide health care support for new mothers and their babies for their first 1,000 days. But the North said the plans are “disgusting.”

The Rodong Shinmun also lashed out at Park’s offer to boost inter-Korean exchanges, calling it “a complete lie.” It claimed that the proposal was meant to deceive the public, saying it was the South Korean government that blocked private interchanges and refused to raise North Korean workers’ pay level at Gaeseong industrial park.